Not Poetry. Quatrain Verse in English & Swedish. Dagsverser. On the Mundane & the Arcane.
Before sunrise he’d be found
like clockwork our rooster
on his fiefdom’s barnyard mound
as his own best booster
Perhaps wound tightly
but hens find him knightly
Comes across sprightly
takes a stance uprightly
Repeatedly he must crow
to hear his own voice inflection
In dedication aglow
offers, as it is, protection
Aren’t we all doing our utmost
while taking good care not to boast?
Eating a tender ‘veal’ meal
brought to dinner table
with ugly, hardhearted zeal
Here’s goes the non-fable:
Cruelty we’re mislabeling
yes, how a calf becomes veal
This is what we are enabling
it’s a once in lifetime steal
He suffers alone the forlorn calf
put in dark bin to become ‘veal’
on pitiless meat eaters behalf
all his hoped-for joy they would steal
After months in the dark
posture hard to be shifted
calf cannot even walk
so weak he must be lifted
Then drawing his last breath
from Hell’s lonely bane
liberated by Death
from the gruesome pain
“My eating cheese, drinking milk
did not kill the milked cow!”
Well, you of indulgent ilk
it does, here’s when & how:
A milked out cow suffers five years
when slaughter ends her life in fears
Reigned briefly
did Humankind
Brawled chiefly
left mess behind
Our Species capricious
in predicament drastic
piled garbage pernicious
stifling planet in plastic!
While us Humans quick in verbal comeback
when it comes to changing we turn our back
Flower’s stalk bows bent
face down, pose dejected
but does she lament
her being rejected?
While I admired her entranced
who else might have noticed
spared but the briefest of glance
or feeling remotest?
Why would a single real life flower need to be seen
when several thousands can be pulled up on your screen?
Knows a Seattle pluviophile
how its drizzle used to beguile
But by now it has gone in exile
these days instead downpours awhile
Memories linger longingly tender
of the long gone drizzle’s subtle splendor
Imagine how she froze
in Winter’s bleakness faded
a sole overstayed rose
shivered but far from jaded
All comfort she spurned
no longer warmed or fed
How for Spring she yearned
though by then she’d be dead
While this story tragic
shows that anticipation
might well offer magic
short of participation
While hard to be farsighted
about what’s unrequited
Flashing sun rays dash around
lightening Fall in dance
Intrepid trees now ungowned
below sky’s swept expanse
Brittle leaves, yellow, cerise
swirling, sailing, glowing
in boisterous chilly breeze
mischievously blowing
In windfall farewell leaves worn
bare branches stretching forlorn
“It didn’t take long for researchers examining the tiny sea snails to see something amiss. The surface of some of their thin outer shells looked as if they had been etched by a solvent. Others were deeply pitted and pocked. These translucent sea butterflies known as pteropods, which provide food for salmon, herring and other fish, hadn’t been burned in some horrific lab accident. They were being eaten away by the Pacific Ocean. Scientists have documented that souring seas caused by carbon dioxide emissions are dissolving pteropods in the wild right now along the U.S. West Coast. That is damaging a potentially important link in the marine food web far sooner than expected.”
– Seattle Times, April, 2014:
http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2014/apr/30/pteropod-shells-dissolving
As long as us humans are ‘evolving’
so what if other ones are dissolving?
Generational abdication
by humans turned the crisp ocean
through acute acidification
into soup of toxic potion
The mollusk pteropod
in translucent shell
now by CO2 flawed
Chimes food chain’s death knell
No longer just a notion
effects ubiquitous
No longer mere slow motion
collapse precipitous
By humans running roughshod
the shells now pocked, softened
of the hapless Gastropod
Grandkids’ future coffined
By killing the pteropod
we’re denying Pterogod
+)
-gastropod = mollusk comprising the snails, whelks, slugs, etc.
-mollusk = a large group of animals (such as snails and clams) twho live in a shell
-pteropod = a small mollusk with winglike extensions for swimming
-‘Pterogod’ = (by license) that of God in Everyone and Everything
We ignore stentorian warning:
Planetary life keeps crumbling
in depletion, pollution, warming
met by our evasive mumbling
We equivocate & grumble
just own convenience is heeded
Glaciers melt & earthquakes rumble
not taking steps urgently needed
Our children & theirs shall pay the price
if we won’t change habits, they’re doomed:
As rivers drain, temperatures rise
ending them too early entombed
But for us, for now, a small price to pay
for enjoying the American Way?
“Am dying to be slim”, the rat had said. Life listened grimly.
A rat rotund felt bereft
been bemoaning his plight
of being fat. Didn’t look left
skipped as well looking right
He stepped into traffic
met a fate most dire:
an end grisly graphic
crushed by a truck’s tire
When found at daybreak
he had been flattened slim
by friends in heartbreak
sort of happy for him
Be careful how you use hyperbole
it may just turn into reality!